Chapter 22
22
ATLAS
C harleston was quiet in the way cities aren’t supposed to be.
Too still. Too watchful. Like the whole damn town was holding its breath, waiting for something to crack.
I’d slipped away before sunrise, long before anyone would’ve had time to spin the headline, let alone trace the scene. I knew the perimeter cameras wouldn’t catch me—hell, I’d installed some of them myself when Ryker wasn’t looking. I knew where the blind spots lived. I knew how to disappear.
Eugene’s blood still felt hot against my palm. The weight of his secrets still clung to my clothes. I hadn’t stopped moving until the marsh swallowed me. Until the city lights thinned into nothing. Until I reached the one place no one knew existed.
Not even my brothers.
A one-bedroom shack on a forgotten curve of Green Island, tucked between a crumbling dock on the Stono River and a spit of lowland forest no developer had managed to buy up yet. I’d paid cash for the property seven years ago, under a name that no longer existed. Never wired utilities. Hauled in a generator. Rain collection barrel out back. Satellite phone buried in a box I hadn’t touched in years.
It wasn’t much.
But it was mine.
And right now, it was the only thing between me and the urge to burn the city down.
The place creaked like it had bones. Weathered wood walls, sloped tin roof, floorboards that shifted underfoot like they remembered storms before I was born. I dropped into the lone chair by the window and stared out at the river, black water like oil under the bruised sky. The clouds were coming in thick now, stacked low and heavy.
The wind was sharp. Too sharp. It cut sideways, whispering secrets in the language only Lowcountry storms spoke—old, coastal tongues full of history and wrath.
A storm was coming.
I didn’t need a forecast to tell me that.
I’d spent my childhood watching my mother stand at the water’s edge, arms open like she was trying to summon the lightning. She could smell storms before they were born. Would pause in the middle of a sentence, tilt her head toward the sea, and say, “It’s time.”
It used to scare me, how right she was.
How wild she looked in those moments.
Hair pulled loose from its braid, eyes bright with something I didn’t yet understand—recklessness, maybe. Or knowing. Or both.
She was soft in every other way. Warm. Musical. Always humming when she folded laundry or chopped vegetables. She touched each of us like we were sacred, even when we were covered in dirt and blood from some backyard scuffle. But when the weather shifted—when the wind changed—she became something else.
Feral. Unshaken. Like she belonged to the storm more than she belonged to land.
I thought of her now, standing barefoot on the sand, hair stuck to her cheeks, laughing into the wind as the thunder came rolling in.
And I wondered, not for the first time, if that was the version of her that disappeared.
The part we couldn’t hold.
I blinked, shoved the thought away.
Not now.
I didn’t have the luxury of grief. Not when there were things I still didn’t understand.
Like why Eugene had been targeted. Why he was taken out before I could wring the rest of the truth from his pathetic, quivering mouth.
He’d started to crack.
Started to talk.
They want you, they’re gonna have you.
That’s what he said.
And then?—
Two rounds.
Clean.
Through the window.
Through his head.
The precision alone told me everything I needed to know.
This wasn’t panic.
This was surgical.
Controlled.
Eugene was a pawn.
And someone had just removed him from the board.
I reached for the knife on the table—my father’s old one, worn black handle, the edge still sharp as memory. I ran a thumb over the spine and stared out at the water again.
The surface was starting to ripple now.
Waves whispering secrets to the reeds.
Even the birds had gone silent.
I didn’t know about the storm from the news. Hadn’t checked a forecast. Didn’t need to.
My mother was inside me, her weather-sense folded into my bones.
She was right. It was time.
I exhaled. Stood. Rolled the tension out of my neck.
Checked my gear—knife, wallet, backup burner tucked into the lining of my pack. My real phone was long gone, smashed and dropped into a sewer on my way out of James Island. I’d sent one text to Ryker before I did it.
Eugene’s dead. Not me. Iris Atwell’s involved. They were lovers. Watch the board. Stay close to Anna.
That was all I needed to say.
My brothers would know what to do.
They’d dig into the Philharmonic’s funding, into Atwell’s accounts, into every name tied to the Charleston elite who might benefit from our demise.
They’d look at this from above. From the angles. From the maps.
But me?
I was done looking.
I was ready to move.
I paced the shack once, slow and deliberate, letting my breath sync with the creak of the walls, the beat of the storm coming in. I felt it settling in my ribs, in the space between each vertebra. Pressure dropping like a warning.
The storm would drive people inside. Clear the streets. Herd the sheep where they thought it was safe.
Perfect for what I had in mind.
I hadn’t decided what my next step would be yet—burn something, break something, bleed someone.
But I knew it would be loud. I wanted them to hear it. Whoever they were. The people behind Eugene. The ones who knew the truth about my mother. About Department 77. The ones who thought Anna was an acceptable casualty.
A means to an end.
A girl they could paint as unstable and discard like garbage.
They didn’t know me.
Not yet.
But they would.
Because I wasn’t just coming for names.
I was coming for blood.
A crack of thunder split the sky above the horizon. The shack shivered. The first fat drops of rain started to fall—slow at first, then steady.
I stepped outside onto the porch and tilted my face up. Let it hit me. Cold. Hard. Cleansing.
Anna.
She was probably scared. Probably wondering where I was, if I’d disappeared for good. If I’d killed the man who tried to ruin her.
I hadn’t.
But I would’ve. God, I would’ve.
She deserved the truth.
But the truth was too dangerous right now.
I wanted to believe she trusted me. Wanted to believe the heat between us meant something deeper. But even if she trusted me now—what would she think when the monster showed its face?
Because that’s what I was.
Not just a soldier.
Not just a brother.
A weapon.
Built to kill.
And someone had activated me.
I clenched my jaw. Wiped the rain from my face.
Let the silence stretch a little longer.
Then I moved.
Not fast. Not loud.
Just ready.
The rain covered my tracks. The wind covered my breath.
And the storm?—
The storm would cover everything else.